[mythtv] "Allow recording even if duplicate episode" is ignored?

[Bruce Markey]

Gregory McLean wrote:
> Joseph A. Caputo wrote:
> 
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: mythtv-dev-bounces at mythtv.org
>>> [mailto:mythtv-dev-bounces at mythtv.org]On Behalf Of Derek Atkins
>>> Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2003 4:11 PM
>>> To: Development of mythtv
>>> Subject: Re: [mythtv] "Allow recording even if duplicate episode" is
>>> ignored?
>>>
>>>
>>> "Joseph A. Caputo" <jcaputo1 at comcast.net> writes:
>>>
>>>
>>>> For a program to be considered a duplicate, it must match 'title',
>>>> 'subtitle' (episode) and 'description' EXACTLY.  If any of them
>>>
>>>
>>> are blank,
>>>
>>>> Myth assumes that there is no way to differentiate between
>>>
>>>
>>> shows and assumes
>>>
>>>> that they're all unique.
>>>
>>>
>>> Ahh, I see.  How unfortunate.
>>>
>>> In my case the title and subtitle are exactly the same, but the
>>> description is empty.  It would be nice if there were a setting to get
>>> it to ignore empty descriptions.  That way I could get it to treat the
>>> programs the same if title + subtitle match exactly (and both
>>> descriptions are empty).
>>>
>>> How hard do you think it would be to add this?
> 
> 
> 
> One would _assume_ that the programs are duplicates if they match? To me 
> the above sounds like a duplicate. Both descriptions are empty and the 
> titles and subtitle are the same unless I'm missing some subtle thing 
> somewhere.

title='MLB Baseball'
subtitle='Chicago Cubs at Boston Red Sox'
description=''

There didn't used to be an option to record all episodes so
the description matching would be needed to get rematches in
sporting events. There may be other exceptions like this but
none come to mind. However, for any series, if the subtitle
is present it should be a unique episode. For generic episodes
(the station is showing Seinfeld but doesn't declare the
specific episode) There shouldn't be a subtitle:

title='Seinfeld'
subtitle='The Contest'
description=''

title='Seinfeld'
subtitle=''
description='Jerry and his friends face life in New York.'

"The Contest" shouldn't be re-recorded even though there is no
description because we know this subtitle is unique. The second
one should be recorded because we don't know if it is an episode
we haven't seen (okay, we've all seen every episode of Seinfeld
but you know what I mean ;-)

So if we have a "record duplicates" option now, we probably
could treat matching subtitles with no descriptions as the
same episode. Sports match ups could still be marked to record
duplicates.

Does anyone know of a case where a generic episode includes a
subtitle? Also, is there a case where two different showings have
the same subtitle but different descriptions and they actually
are different episodes?

--  bjm

PS if more choices for matching were needed, they could be put
in a spinbox in place of the current duplicates checkbox so it
wouldn't need any extra space on the advanced options page.